


The Love We Bear Them

by Satchelfoot



Category: Bombshells (DC Comics)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28146984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Satchelfoot/pseuds/Satchelfoot
Relationships: John Constantine/Zatanna Zatara
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Love We Bear Them

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aelisheva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelisheva/gifts).



**Gotham City, 1950**

You know what they seldom tell you in fairy tales about gorgeous people who get sorcerously transmogrified into other sorts of creatures? I’ve never, myself, heard of a story that did any justice to the amount of sheer bloody _grooming_ you have to do just to be presentable to your nearest and dearest. Me, I was a rabbit once, stuck that way for weeks, and whilst I can’t swear that it was the most dignified stretch of my life, it did include all the advantages of being little. Smaller volume of fur, understand? Fewer precious minutes allocated to the old spit-‘n’-shine. Whereas if you look at me now—well, _now_...

Hang on, I’ll back up a tick. I’m John Constantine, mage extraordinaire. Boyhood in Liverpool, espionage and eldritch combat all over Europe during the war, lately to be found faffing about in manifold dimensions large and small, bright and dark. For as long as I choose to remember, I didn’t give a fig about anything besides my next mission for Her Majesty’s clandestine magics department—no friends, no hearth, and certainly no regard for my own rusted coalscuttle of a life. Then I met the most powerful, beautiful woman to be found in any plane of existence: one that looks brilliant in a top hat and uses pure, raw magic with more skill and grace than you could ever imagine. We got each other out of a good many scrapes, had a few curse-throwing fights, and, somewhere along of helping to save the world, managed to get quite besotted with each other. We also ended up with a kid: girl name of Raven, near as powerful as my exquisite Zatanna and similarly abused by creatures far worse than whatever you thought might be under your bed when you were a little mite. So we’re a family of sorts now—the kind that makes a pleasant outing of, say, a three days’ jaunt to the underworld to clear out a nest of Parademons.

Anyroad, to get back to my current situation, one day an impertinent little nit of a sorcerer tries to put a spell on Zee and me. His plan was that Zatanna would turn into a penguin from sunset to sunrise, while I would become a polar bear from dawn to dusk. We would never share a human form at the same time and would thus be tragically separated unto the end of our lives or something, I guess. I don’t rightly know just why the fool tried it, and he’s not exactly around to ask. To give him his due, more than half of the spell did work: here I am, as you can see, doomed for the time being to live as a polar bear during daylight hours. And Zatanna does turn into a penguin (and a truly adorable one, though you’ll never catch me saying so to her face) when the sun goes down; only, she changes right back into her fine human form after about ten minutes. Raven and I both got in front of her and tried to block the spell at once, with no ill effects for the kiddo and a little backsplash for me. So here am I, Constantine the Partly Ursine, a great bear-lump by day, a smaller man-lump by night.

It’s not so bad, really, the additional hygienic burden notwithstanding. I’m not even sure I’d want to reverse it just now. Zee and I can see to our various human needs after I change back for the night, you know. And it’s great for, scaring the sauce out of my adversaries when our sorcerous skirmishes last until dawn.

Something already feels different when I wake up in my fur just past the crack of dawn—I mean, something besides waking up in a chamber of the Batcave, which only happens twice a year. We’re in Gotham for our biennial Bombshells meeting and shindig: me and Zee and Ren; obviously our hosts, the Batgirls; newlyweds Kate and Maggie, who really sound serious these days about running away to the country and having a little one; and Raven’s best friend, Miri Marvel, who somehow keeps making time for us lot in her international teaching schedule. We’re the regulars—sometimes we see Harley and Ivy, Renee, and even good old Vampire Batgirl, but we don’t count on it. Whoever shows, we spend the afternoon planning how best to help the world keep itself happy and safe. Then we devote the evening to celebrating our continued survival and the peace we’ve made, for as long as both may continue.

Zee’s already out of bed, which is already a bit of change from most mornings. I stretch my impressive polar bear stretch and get going. Naturally, the Batgirls’ butler/bodyguard/City Hall liaison/man about town, Harvey Dent, is up and about already, every inch of him properly ironed and creased and dratted handsome as always, including the glittering obsidian facets on the scarred side of his face. We exchange g’days and a promise to play a bit of chess after things wind down tonight. I ask him if he’s seen my wife and/or my kid, and he waves a hand in a general upward direction. Ground level it is, then. I touch the pointless but impressive giant penny on my way to the lift, for luck.

There they are, both watching the sunrise. Ren’s up in a tree, Zatanna on a nearby bench. There isn’t a bear’s worth of room next to Zee, so I lean up against the tree—it’s a sturdy one, no cause to worry about shaking Raven out of it even if she couldn’t fly.

“’Lo, Zee. Ren.”

“Good morning, my love.”

“Hey, bearent.”

The portmanteau of “bear” and “parent” has struck me as entirely too twee since she came up with it, but I’ve learned to endure it without audible protest. “You both ready for the shindig tonight?”

“Yeah, I’m—I’m way more than ready, actually,” Raven says.

“Mm,” Zatanna murmurs. “I am looking forward to seeing Kate Kane again. She wishes to teach me an intriguing dance step she calls the Charleston.”

They’re both quiet then, in a waiting sort of way. I start to wonder if I’ve blundered unwanted into a mother-daughter conversation, which has been known to happen. Mayhap I should go back down in the Cave and see about scaring up some breakfast. But then Raven says, “Hey, John?”

“Yes, pet?”

“I want to go traveling with Mir. We’ve been talking about it for a while now, in our letters. She says with everything I’ve learned, I could be a really wonderful teacher. And she can always use help.”

Well. There it is, then. Zee and I have been knowing this was coming for a bit. The girl’s very near nineteen, after all, and of course she wasn’t going to be content hunting and conjuring with us forever. We’ve done our share and more of discussing, fretting, arguing, and supposing about exactly when and how she would want to strike out on her own, to say nothing of whether we’d passed her enough knowledge and skill to be going on with. But now that the moment’s come, it doesn’t feel like quite as big a deal as I feared.

Still, I find there’s something of a lump in my throat just now. I try to clear my throat, which is pretty well impossible for a bear to do quietly and inconspicuously. I lock eyes with Zatanna and see my own feelings all over her face.

“Well, I don’t know what you two said to each other about it before I got up here, but look, kiddo, we always thought you and Miri could do something extraordinary together if you want to, with all the magic you share and all you’ve been through together. So… I’m glad you want to. Pretty sure the other one feels the same way.” Zee smiles slightly and nods. “We’ll want to talk more to the pair of you about traveling safely and all that, of course. But, all things being squared and measured, it seems to me you really ought to go.”

“Yes.” Zatanna gives me a tender look and then gazes up at our girl. “I have many questions, but I wouldn’t dream of stopping you when you have so much to give to the world, my darling.”

Even from down here, I can feel the poor kid finally relax, now she’s told us both the big news. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I can’t wait to tell Mir. And I promise to be safe and remember all you’ve both taught me.”

That’s enough to be going on with for now, I suppose. Seems about time for an abrupt subject change. “So. You’re all prepared for Shabbat tomorrow night, I reckon?”

“Yes!” Ren’s eyes light up again. “Kate’s been practicing her Hebrew. I think she’s going to try to recite Kiddush.”

“Well, fair play to her, then.”

We all fall silent, this time a companionable quiet rather than an anxious one, and keep on watching the sunrise. Our strange, lovely family. We may not have a great many of these mornings left together. I walk over behind Zee and rest my paws on her shoulders. She reaches up and strokes my arm fur. I look up at Ren, then back out at the sunset. I open my big black eyes wide and chuff out a big exhalation, trying to blaze every detail onto my memory so Zatanna and I can take some comfort in moments like this later as we find out what it’s like to let go.


End file.
